Studio Number One affiliate Ernesto Yerena has a brand new print to release later this week. “Fidel” is a 22″ x 31″ screenprint, has an edition of 50 (each colorway), and will be $100. It goes up Thursday, February 4th at a random time. Visit HechoConGanas.com.

@ Everyone else.. Ernesto is young, and still very fresh in the art world. Given time an artist’s style, technique, and subject inevitably evolves. The fact that this mere 23 year old is producing work at this caliber, sponsored by Montana Paint and represented by White Walls Gallery in San Francisco –
(http://www.whitewallssf.com/artists/ernesto-yerena/ )
conjures excitement and anticipation for what is to come. In the mean time let’s not hate too much while he establishes his style and grows out of that spectacular shadow.http://tiny.cc/ernestoyerena

This is not okay to charge $100, let alone any money, for a print of a mass murderer. Whoever thinks that this is cool, just like people who wear Che shirts around, should look again.

And those people who are trying to justify Fidel’s and Che’s mass murders, and comparing them to LBJ in Vietnam…. check your head.

If you are a communist lover go ahead and hang this print on your American wall that you feel safety within knowing that the leader of your nation isn’t going to come to your door and kill you with his hands.

@Wowzers: if it’s not ok to sell the print, and it’s not ok to give the print away, what alternative are you proposing here?
Please oh please tell me you’re advocating censorship on an website dedicated to ART. The irony would more than make up for the time I just wasted reading your comment.
Ooooo, maybe we should round up ANY artwork we find objectionable and burn it in a gigantic bonfire in town square! That’ll teach these commie bastards to mess around with our freedoms!!!

@ Iron Jaiden: Did I say anything about censorship? are you nuts – i am def not in favor of censorship, that would be taking away our FREEDOMS.

All I was suggesting was don’t make the print in the first place. Marketing a mass murderer is not cool. Neither are the Che shirts that you see everyone wearing, and the only reason most of them wear them is because its a fad and they think its cool.

I’m saying do a little homework before you go endorsing mass murderers.

@Wowzers: I was asking what your logical conclusion would be given your disapproval of the print being sold or even given away at all.
In suggesting that the print not be made in the first place you’re calling on an artist to practice self-censorship, which is still a form of censorship.
No censorship is needed here. Art does not need to “endorse” or “promote” a person or agenda to depict said person or agenda.
I would ask you to stop for a moment and imagine a world where artists refuse to depict questionable and possibly offensive material.

Bort77, I ask for proof of murders because they do not exist. Give me the name of just one Cuban “murdered” by the Cuban Government since the Revolution and I’ll shut up. Obama has already killed more innocents than Fidel ever did.

We know Cubans in Miami don’t like Fidel. They, by and large, were the white elites who ran the county before the people took it back. Of course there is resentment that their 3rd and 4th homes were confiscated (2 homes were allowed after the Revolution) or their 1,000 acre farm was broken up and given to the peasant farmers (a max of 67 acres was permitted; Fidel’s own parents lost some land to their workers).

The argument of “why do so many want to leave then” is BS. First off, Cubans have always come to the US – it’s 90 miles away. But on a per capita basis, Cubans represent a far smaller % of the migrant population than before the Revolution. For example, in 2009, there were nearly 3 times as many people caught at sea by the US Coast Guard from the island of Hispanola (Haiti and DR) than Cuba (I just checked USCG stats). But they don’t make the evening news when they arrive like Cubans do. So fewer Cubans arrive than many other nationals, despite the distance AND the fact that Cubans alone are given automatic US residency status (citizenship) upon reaching US shores. Could you imagine if any other people were given that right? Poor countries would simply empty out… Add the embargo to the mix and it is easy to conclude that US policy is the biggest factor in Cuban migration.

And to the person who said that Fidel is the only author allowed in Cuba or Cuban libraries or whatever, is completely full of crap. Even the reports o censorship are off base. The American Library Association sent a delegation to Cuba with a list of 20 so-called banned books (as reported by the Miami crowd) and found that most of them were completely available. The list of distinguished Cuban authors is as long as any other country in the hemisphere.

Cuba is the only place in Latin America where you won’t find children working on the streets and starving to death. Cuba is the only place in Latin America that offers 100% free quality education and health care. Yeah, they don’t make a lot of money, but that leaves out the fact that everything is free. When that is factored in, the per capita income in Cuba is over 10k (more than most in the region).

Let’s try to remember the US is more or less completely isolated with this embargo business. In Canada, you see “Visit Cuba!” billboards and bus ads. It’s fucking hilarious because where I come from (the US of A), the very notion is regarded as borderline suicidal. Thanks, corporate media!!